


Santa

by apparitionism



Series: Gifts [2]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Bering & Wells Holiday Gift Exchange 2018, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28347381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: Happy Boxing Day! This, too, was written for @mfangeleeta for the Gift Exchange. For the purposes of this not-quite-canon Warehouse story, let’s say there was no season 5, nor most of season 4. The Warehouse came back, and everybody got right with god, including Myka and Helena, who realized that the time left to them on this earth should be spent together—as we all know should have happened on the silly show. Someone in the B&W tag was asking if they should watch S5, reminding me of what a bunch of garbage it was, and that kind of pointlessness has no place here. I much prefer sweetness, which is just as pointless but is also, I hope, a more satisfying thing to find with your name on it under the tree. This is a two-parter, and it’s both very talky and extremely contrived.
Relationships: Myka Bering/Helena "H. G." Wells
Series: Gifts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058486
Comments: 15
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s Christmas soon,” Helena said, in that tone Myka had learned, over the past several months (eight of them, plus two weeks and three days, but who was counting… okay, Myka was counting, but could it really be considered _counting_ if you didn’t multiply it all out and narrate for yourself an entire relationship day-by-day ticktock, which of course she did not do?), to read as “I am saying something of significance to our relationship, but I will not make that significance immediately comprehensible to you because why would I do that when I could make your life difficult.”

(Possibly Myka was still a little resentful about the incident in September involving what Helena had and/or hadn’t supposedly made clear that she wanted for her birthday.)

They were in bed, reading, side-by-side at the end of a long day, and the scene should have been one of calming domesticity, in recompense for the Warehouse-y nature of that long day. Instead, Myka now found herself tensing, due both to residual birthday anxiety and to oh-god-what-is-it-now apprehension, as she agreed, “It is.”

“Do you have plans?” Helena asked, with that same “incomprehensible significance” tone.

Myka stalled; whatever it was, she was pretty sure she wanted to put it off. “Plans?”

“Yes. That was the word.” Now Helena was dug in: her face wasn’t moving at all, and her tone had shifted to one Myka thought of as “committed to summiting Everest.”

Myka stalled again. “For it?”

“Yes.”

Myka gave up wishing for a hint. “Just the usual,” she said.

“I don’t know what ‘the usual’ is.”

“Tree. Presents. Sweaters. Holiday cheer. Although Pete does make it all a little difficult.” In response to Helena’s raised eyebrow—her right eyebrow, which Myka had come to know as the interrogative one; the left was skeptical or suggestive, or sometimes both, depending on the circumstance—Myka said, “He gets whammied.”

The eyebrow fell. “That happens all year round.”

“But at Christmas it’s worse. Peculiarly worse. It’s like he gets visited by the Ghost of Christmas Hey Pete Lattimer, Why Don’t You Pick Up This Artifact.”

“Hm,” said Helena, with a taking-note furrowing of the brow.

Myka ventured, “Do _you_ have plans?”

“I have in this very moment begun formulating a new one,” Helena said, looking not at her book now but into the middle distance, at the expanse of wall across the room. Not as if to burn a hole in that wall, as Myka had certainly seen her seem to attempt to do, but using it as a mental chalkboard.

“For Christmas?”

“In a sense.” Still middle-distance. She’d closed her book and was holding its hard cover between her palms; she tapped her fingers against the boarded surfaces.

“This plan. Does it involve… well… me?”

“Tangentially.”

“I’m only tangentially involved in your Christmas plans?”

That did get Helena’s attention. “What? No, plans in the large weren’t what I—”

And for some reason Myka could not keep herself from interrupting, doubling down: “Because honestly, on the topic of plans, I wasn’t thinking we’d need to go out of our way to do anything, because we’d be together. For the first time.”

“So sentimental,” Helena said, but there was no sting, for she leaned to kiss Myka, sweet and swift. “At a very sentimental time of year.”

“Tell me about it,” Myka said, tripling down. “Every Christmas, for as long as I’ve known you, however many years,” she continued, as if she couldn’t remember, as if she were somehow able to be absentminded about Helena and her history of absent presence, “every Christmas, I wondered what it would be like, to have you there. Here. But you never were, so I guess _I_ should have asked _you_ about plans way before now instead of assuming you’d want to be here with us. With me. Because I did assume, and because assuming anything about you is just a recipe for—”

Helena kissed her again, just as fast, as if she wanted to stop Myka talking but didn’t want to get distracted. “Exhibit A.”

“Of what?”

“You always say we are terrible at communication. I give you Exhibit A.”

Myka raised an eyebrow of her own. “At this point, shouldn’t we be numbering them? And aren’t we on Exhibit, I don’t know, some high-thousands? So okay, why _haven’t_ we talked about Christmas before now? I was busy making assumptions that were all kinds of sentimental, but why did _you_ wait?”

“Because Artie told us he would be away visiting his father for the holidays. And it led me to wonder whether you might have been intending to visit _your_ family, but I didn’t want to hear you to tell me you were, _if_ you were. Thus dashing my own sentimental hopes.”

“So were you thinking you’d just Schrödinger’s-cat it on Christmas morning? Open that box, find me or not-me?”

“Your presence in, or absence from, South Dakota has nothing to do with a superpositioned quantum state—prior to Christmas morning or at any other time.” This was a grumble.

“I keep telling you, almost everybody uses it outside its original thought-experiment context now.”

Not a grumble now, but a fume: “And _I_ keep telling _you_ , give me time to process original contexts before you utilize popular-culture transplantations! With regard to quantum mechanics and everything else!”

“Be quiet,” Myka said. “The whole house doesn’t need to know what you keep telling me. They probably do know, but I wish they didn’t. And how exactly did we get from talking about the sentimentality of Christmas to you yelling at me about physics in under a minute?”

“I believe it is your fault this time. But: Exhibit B.” She did say this, however, at lowered volume.

“High thousands plus one,” Myka countered.

“We would make a ridiculous court of law.”

“At least an overwhelmed one. But yes. We would. How fortunate that that isn’t what we are.”

And Helena drummed her fingers on her book again, now as if she might be Morse-coding out a position paper on whether being a ridiculous court of law would in fact be better than whatever they were.

Myka had never loved anyone like this: had never loved like this, and had never loved anyone who _was_ like this. Being yelled at about Schrödinger’s cat—which, yes, had been her own fault—wasn’t even in the running for top three weird exchanges _today_. On any given day or night, she might be subjected to harangues about “dry clean only” fabrics; raptures about automated harvesting combines; _ideas_ about additional uses for MRI machines, hearing aids, 3-D motion-capture technology, Velcro. It was all wonderful, except when it wasn’t, and eight months plus two weeks and three days in, a large part of the thorniness lay in acknowledging that she would never grasp the situation fully, could never even stretch far enough to reach blind arms around it. But when wishes came true, it was unrealistic to expect that every aspect would conform to some ideal—or would conform, in the end, to anything with vaguely recognizable contours.

 _This is the one you wanted_ , Myka told herself, not infrequently. _This is the one you saw and said “that’s for me,” and you didn’t look back, not once, not even when you were hating and punishing yourself for being stupid and duped; not even then did you think ‘that’s **not** for me.” All you thought was “that **was** for me.” And you tried to accept that everything from then on would be in the past tense._

So whatever the difficulties were? All that mattered was that they happened in the present.

Which didn’t make them any less… difficult. Three days later, preparing to go to the Warehouse, Myka came upon Helena in the B&B’s front room. She was wrestling with a six-foot-tall wooden step ladder, right in the middle of the space, and Myka feared for the safety of the light fixture above her.

“What are you doing?” Myka asked, as much to save the light as to get an answer. She wasn’t sure she wanted an answer, really, given that “Helena” plus “implement” could equal anything at all…

It worked: Helena stopped swinging the ladder around like some oversized Louisville Slugger. She turned to face Myka. “I am preparing to commence a competition,” she said.

“A competition with…?” Myka asked, hoping the answer wasn’t going to be “this ladder.”

“Claudia.”

“A competition with Claudia in which you compete to…”

“Determine who can produce the most extensively decorated Christmas display. Incorporating a tree.”

“I’m not going to ask how this came about.”

Helena said, “I proposed it.”

Myka sighed. “That’s why I wasn’t going to ask. On account of not wanting to hear that answer.”

“Why would you not want to hear that answer?” asked Helena. She really was working her “picture of innocence” act for all it was worth.

“Why would I not… Helena, why are you _like this_?”

Helena paused. She licked her teeth, as if she might have had some concern about a vestige of lipstick. “I’ve done a great deal of reading about the human genome.”

“That’s not at all surprising. But—”

“ _But_ my reading indicates that no one has yet determined the precise genes and, most crucially, the gene expressions that may function within each of us to contribute to our developing a ‘personality,’ as that term is currently understood. Also something I had to study up on, by the way; we didn’t have those back in my day.”

“I’m not falling for that ‘back in my day’ business, not this time. The concept of personality isn’t that new.”

Helena offered a crafty “Do you know that for certain?”

“Doesn’t matter, because I’m pretty sure you did have a personality. In fact I’m pretty sure it was a lot like this one: determined to win and be proved right about everything, no matter how fine-grained, and willing to work for days to prove it. And by the way back at you, it’s that willingness to work that makes you tolerable. Lovable, even.” Because it was true.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or to storm off in an offended huff.”

“That’s redundant. Who storms off in a huff when they _aren’t_ offended? But I don’t see why you have to choose. I’ve seen you do both those things at the same time.”

“Multitasking!”

“Speaking of things you should read up on. Why do you refuse to learn what that word actually means?”

Helena smiled. “Perhaps because you react just like this when I use it in such a supposedly improper way. And yet, o arbiter of word usage and all matters definitional, if more than one task is being accomplished at once, how is that not the literal definition of multitasking? Now, come do some multitasking of your own: continue to chastise me while also helping me initiate this tree-adornment undertaking.”

“You’re allowed to have help?”

“Certainly with the preparations, and in any case there are very few rules as such. Other than those imposed by universal physical laws, which Claudia has sworn she will not circumvent.”

“Thank god for that. Probably.”

“Oh, and we’re restricted, ornamentally, to found objects. No spending of money on anything other than the trees themselves, which we’ll be choosing together, to ensure that they’re of reasonable, and commensurate, size.”

“Aren’t you worried that Claudia knows where Leena keeps the decorations and you don’t?”

“That will make no difference. My approach is based not on Christmas as such, but rather on set theory. _Counting_.”

“You’re going with ‘more stuff’?”

“In a sense.”

“Okay,” Myka said, and now her thought was _Not just difficult, but exhausting_. “Who’s judging this rodeo? It can’t be just you and Claudia duking it out.”

“Claudia has already spoken to Steve and Pete and Leena. I lobbied for you to be included on the panel, but Claudia insisted that your conflict of interest would impair your objectivity.”

“Would it,” Myka said.

“Something about your wish to continue seeing me naked outweighing your interest in fairness. I told her that she severely misunderstands both you and our relationship.”

Myka snorted. “You got that right. I mean, I do have that wish to continue, but—” She noticed that Helena was raising her left eyebrow, and she hurried to add, “Speaking of impaired objectivity, doesn’t Steve always take Claudia’s side in everything?”

“Even if that were generally true, there will be an _objective_ winner, and it will be I. No judgment required.”

“Are you being an egotist?”

“I am being truthful,” Helena said.

She did seem sincere, but… “Those things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Myka pointed out.

Helena drew what was recognizably an _I had not considered that_ breath. She said, with a nod, “Fair enough.”

“I can’t help you, anyway; Steve’s shift babysitting Pete ends in little while, and I’m up next. You can’t complain, given that the whole thing was your idea.”

“I’m rather proud of myself for having formulated the plan, after you told me about his… holiday habit. So I’ll concede the greater importance of that task. Is it wrong of me to suggest that we consider keeping it up, even after the holidays?”

“Yes. That’s wrong of you.”

“I suppose it’s true that there are certain inconveniences for those of us doing the sitting.”

“That’s not why it’s wrong. He’s a grown man.” Myka was in fact pretty uncomfortable with the whole thing, even as she had to concede that it was working so far. Pete was likely to be offended, thinking that they thought he couldn’t be trusted—which he couldn’t, not at Christmas, but that was hardly the point.

“A grown man who destroys Christmas every year, in your telling.”

“He doesn’t destroy it. He just… makes it a little more challenging.”

“Christmas is not meant to be challenging.”

“I think a lot of families would disagree with you. And besides, aren’t you and Claudia _challenging_ each other?” It was a feeble little feint, but it was all she could come up with.

Helena responded, grandly, “It is no challenge, not for me.” Then, in her everyday voice, she said, “The most difficult undertaking, to my mind, is this bisecting of the room so that we won’t see each other’s work—that’s my job, in return for which Claudia agreed to take one of my own shifts with Pete. I’m hanging a curtain. I have packages of temporary hooks for the purpose. Do you know, they attach by means of a polymer that—”

“Leena’s going to lose it. You’d better ask her first,” Myka said, to forestall the paeans that generally accompanied any discussion of modern adhesives.

“She suggested it, after I shared with her my initial idea.”

“Which was?” Myka asked, and she tensed in anticipation of the answer, because it could have been anything: a laser array, a dimensional portal, stacks and stacks of Pete’s comic books…

“To build a temporary wall. Framed, and with drywall, joint tape, mudding—all the accoutrements. Mainly for the experience; I haven’t ever done that before.”

Myka said, “Wouldn’t all of this be easier if you just bought the house next door, so you and Claudia could do this the old-fashioned, outdoor-lights way? You haven’t ever done that before either.”

Speaking of lights: Helena’s entire face lit up, her eyes all at once even more focused, a blush of some sudden emotion rising on the planes of her cheeks. “I don’t know what the old-fashioned, outdoor-lights way is,” she said, “but I would be _delighted_ to buy the house next door and do anything you suggest in relation to it, with lights that are outdoor _or_ indoor. On the condition that you live in that no doubt strangely lit house with me.”

Was she serious? It would hardly be surprising for Helena to bring up something so potentially life-changing in the totally incongruous context of her lack of knowledge of Christmas lights. Myka had indeed wondered if this idea of a place of their own might be something Helena had thought about… because Myka had been thinking about it. Every repetition of “keep your voice down” increased its pragmatism, to her mind, as a possibility, and maybe this was a place to start. “Inconvenient for that seeing-you-naked thing if I didn’t,” she ventured. “Live there with you, I mean.”

“That may depend on how the lighting situation develops,” Helena said.

All right, maybe she’d been entirely joking. “It’s also going to depend on whether you go around bisecting rooms, with temporary walls or curtains or anything else. I like an open floor plan.”

“You yourself have declared the practice romantic!”

“I did?”

“It. Happened. One. Night. Which film we watched at your behest, and during which you declared the ‘walls of Jericho’ scene extremely romantic.”

“It is!”

“A room bisected! With a curtain!”

Myka shook her head. “Determined to win and be proved right about everything, no matter how fine-grained.”

“You _cannot_ be upset that I am right about—that I remember!—what it is you find romantic.”

“ _In movies_ , and did I say I was upset about that? But it isn’t romantic when there’s no _reason_ for us to resist each other—then it’s just some weird curtain hanging where it shouldn’t.”

“The transgression of boundaries, however. We shall see what you think of it when we are living in the house next door.”

A reintroduction: that upped the odds that she was serious. “It doesn’t have to be _right_ next door,” Myka tried now. “It could be down the block. Or across town? I don’t actually know what the housing market’s like here.”

“I don’t know ‘the housing market’ to say hello to,” Helena said, “but I will take up real estate as a project. If you’re amenable.”

“Please do,” Myka said, as sincerely as she could, and Helena blinked in a way that suggested she was both surprised and pleased. So they had both been wondering about their conversation’s significance level… that warmed Myka. “I’m going to babysit Pete now. And yes, I will say out loud again, I’m doing that because it was your idea, and that that idea was good.”

“Thank you. I didn’t want our first Christmas together ruined—at least, not by Pete. I suspect we’ll manage to impose challenges all our own.”

“I suspect so too.” Had there ever been a situation in which they _hadn’t_ imposed challenges all their own? She told Helena, just to make sure, “Bear in mind, though, I actually do want to keep seeing you naked.”

“Thank you for that, too.”

The half-smile Helena then produced—with the left half of her lip, which was clearly hooked up to the same brain region as the left eyebrow—was of such perfect lascivious calibration that Myka couldn’t help but laugh. Mostly in disbelief at the idea that she was able to look at this face every day… at the idea that she could, this very day, lean forward and kiss it, with just-right awkwardness, through the rungs of a ladder. “You might be right about the transgression of boundaries,” she said, and Helena smirked in a way specific to Myka having offered this kind of concession. Myka went on, “Don’t break anything. And before you start asking about categories, to keep me here longer, yes, that includes your own bones and everything else.”

****

In the time since Myka departed for the Warehouse, Helena had, in order: preened a bit more about having been right about boundaries; pouted at being left alone, in spite of her acknowledgement of the importance of overseeing Pete; extracted several bedsheets of dubious provenance from the deepest reaches of the linen closet; and joined those bedsheets into a large, curtainesque square. To accomplish this latter task without having to _sew_ , she had utilized a great number of safety pins. (“Why do you have so many?” she had asked Leena, from whom she had begged the pins; Leena replied, “Safety is extremely important around here.”) She had also realized the importance of setting aside the enormously compelling idea of living in a private home with Myka as too glorious and distracting a thing upon which to concentrate while utilizing fine motor skills. (The “anything” in Myka’s “don’t break anything” most likely included “the surface of your skin,” and Helena did not want to have to explain that sort of transgression.) Now, after determining the appropriate placement of temporary hooks on the ceiling, she was preparing to ascend the ladder and begin the affixing and subsequent hanging. Claudia-Furtherance of Christmas Plan, she was calling this, to follow the Pete-Centric Conception of Said Plan.

Before she took the first step, however, Steve ambled his very calm way into the room. He regarded the situation for a moment. Then he said, “Hey, Helena. Myka mentioned you might need some help with a ladder. And a curtain, and it’s romantic but not?”

“If you have other plans, now that your shift has ended, please don’t concern yourself.”

“It’s okay. Anything’s a nice change from Pete-sitting… but I think he’s getting suspicious.” He gestured at the ladder. “I’ll hold this steady, okay?”

“Thank you,” she said, and began to climb. “ _I_ still maintain that we should simply tell him about it. Where’s the harm?”

“He gets so defensive, though, about the Christmas… you know.”

“Mishaps?” Helena asked. She looked down at him.

“I might use a stronger word.”

“I don’t think you would. Not with me, at any rate. You’re very polite to me.”

“I still feel like I don’t know you that well. We work together fine, even better than fine?”—he glanced the question up at her, and she nodded, for it was certainly so—“but everybody else has these _ties_ to you.”

“They’ve often wanted to strangle me with those ties, the lack of which most likely has a bit to do with why you and I work together in our better-than-fine way.”

“Also you almost never lie to me. Only inadvertently, which is more than can be said for a lot of people who should know better.”

“What would be the point? Additionally, I’ve tried to give it up. Lying. As a real _practice_ , that is. And it’s _been_ good practice, being around you.”

“So I’m useful to you.” He sounded disappointed.

“Not only that,” Helena said; it seemed essential to reassure him. “I haven’t had a friend in some time, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel that you and I… are? Friends, that is.” This time, she looked the question down at him, and he nodded. Helena struggled for a moment with what to say next. She cleared her throat. “Speaking of useful, would you be so kind as to hand me that extra package of hooks, just there? I need one more.”

He inspected the hooks before passing them up to her. “You’re sure these won’t pull any of the paint off the ceiling? I don’t want to spend New Year’s on this very ladder with a roller in my hand.”

Helena, pleased to at last be able to share what she’d learned, began, “The adhesive polymer that—”

“Never mind,” he interrupted. “Speaking of friends, what about Myka?”

“She has no interest in seeing her friends naked,” Helena informed him.

He laughed. “I’m pleased to hear that.”

“The last real friend I had, I did not do right by. I will try to do right by you. Now the curtain itself, please, if you don’t mind.”

He gathered and gathered and gathered the fabric in his arms, then remarked, of the accumulation, “This is enormous.”

“It’s a large room.”

He held portions of material up to her, length by length, and she attached in the same fashion, and as they did that, he said, “Do right by me to atone for not doing right by your last real friend?”

“No. Do right by you because you merit it.”

“You aren’t lying.”

She’d had the sheeting held high in her hands; now she lowered it to look directly at him. “Did you listen to a single one of the very sentimental words I recently said?”

“You have weird ideas about what’s sentimental. Also about what to do at Christmas, but I guess that’s mostly Claudia’s fault. I promise I won’t give her any kind of leg up on you in the judging of this whatever decoration deal.”

“Thank you, but you need not concern yourself.”

“You really think she doesn’t have a chance of beating you?”

“I think you need not concern yourself.”

“You realize that makes me concerned.”

“Am I lying to you?”

“Well… no.”

“Then you need not concern yourself. Additionally, given what you’ve explained to me about your Buddhism, wouldn’t you consider exercising concern of that sort an unskillful deed?”

“You actually paid attention when I was explaining all that?”

They had been in a car, waiting what seemed an interminable amount of time for a fellow with clearly nefarious intent to make his move with an artifact: a gun, as it happened, and given that neither Helena nor Steve had much of a positive attitude toward firearms, it was a wait for an undesired event. A somewhat ironic time all around to be discussing the finer points of Buddhism, but Helena hadn’t known those finer points, and Steve did. So. “Of course I did. I always pay attention. I can’t claim that my memory is as vivid as Myka’s, but I do try to fill the rooms in the palace.”

“Claudia’s right: you keep getting weirder, but in really nice ways.”

“Today is clearly my day to wonder whether to say thank you or storm off in an offended huff.”

“Aren’t all huffs offended?”

“And I intend to at some point remember, before speaking, that rhetorical embellishment is frowned upon in this establishment.”

“Now _that’s_ a lie. You don’t have any such intention.”

“At some point I _may be fortunate enough to_ _remember_ , before speaking, that rhetorical embellishment is frowned upon in this establishment. Better? Hypotheticals, even unlikely ones, don’t set you off, do they?”

“Not as bad. Thanks.” He smiled: a lovely sight. Had Helena not been atop a ladder, she might have embraced him, but as it was, her answering smile seemed just as welcome.

****

Sitting in the Warehouse office with Pete, Myka was working on writing up a report based on her notes from their last retrieval—a mirror from one of the arches in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, and “I hate mirrors,” Myka had complained before the retrieval to Artie, during the retrieval to Pete, and after the retrieval to Helena. That this particular mirror didn’t manage to do anything to her personally didn’t mitigate the situation at all, as far as she was concerned. “Why’d that dumb Sun King have to slap mirrors up all over his stupid palace anyhow,” she’d whined to Helena, even though she knew the answer.

“I can tell you’re upset, because you’re mimicking Pete’s diction,” Helena had said. “But in answer to your question: glory wants to be reflected.”

“Well, _this_ mirror sought out glory and reflected it, whether the glory actually wanted it or not,” Myka told her, for that was indeed what the artifact had done. That it also had the potentially disturbing tendency to prompt those whom it reflected to seek greater and greater glory—to never be satisfied with the reflection they saw—seemed part of the philosophical point as well.

Myka was having trouble focusing on the particulars, however, as she tried to keep a surreptitious eye on Pete… statements such as “We flew to Paris” and “We interrogated a suspect” were the extent of her eloquence so far. She was having trouble focusing on the particulars for another reason, too, so she sighed and gave up. “I need to talk to you about something,” she said.

He looked up from his comic book. “Is it about why you’re acting all squirrely?”

“I’m not acting all squirrely.”

“You keep _looking_ at me.”

“Of course I’m looking at you. You’re the only other person here.”

“Right. I am.” He pointed both his index fingers at her. “I know what’s really going on.”

“You do?” she asked. He probably _had_ figured out what was happening. She braced herself for him to be hurt, and she also braced for what she’d intended all along to do if this came up: tell him it had been her idea. He and Helena had come to such a decent understanding, and Myka had no desire to see what seemed to be developing into a real friendship take a turn back into snarky digs (on Pete’s part) and exaggerated remorse (on Helena’s).

“You’re fidgeting,” he said, and Myka had to concede that he was right about that. He gazed at her for a while than finally said, “You guys are working on something for Christmas, something I’m not allowed to see.”

“Sort of,” she acknowledged, thankful beyond measure that this had been his thought. “But… kind of in reverse.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Exactly. Besides, you know what’s going on: Claudia and Helena are having their smackdown. I’d’ve thought you’d be all over that.”

“I would be! But it’s all opposite day with them: Claudia’s got this super-scary focused face on, and H.G.’s walking around all laid-back like she’s got some magic plan.”

“She does not have a magic plan,” Myka said, but she added, “probably,” because you really never did know.

“So what did you want to talk to me about, El Squirrelo, if you aren’t letting me in on the fancy magic plan?”

“It isn’t a _magic_ plan, and don’t call me ‘El Squirrelo.’ But. She does have, or she might be putting together—or _we_ might be putting together, if she was serious about it, and she might’ve been trying to pretend she wasn’t, there at the beginning, but I think we got to the point where she really was—a nonmagic plan.”

“A nonmagic plan to what? Cheat to help H.G. win the contest?”

“Of course not!” He was clearly just trying to get her goat, but _honestly_ —as if she would cheat. (And, also honestly, as if she thought Helena needed any help winning _anything_ she decided she wanted to win. Magic plan or not.)

“Okay, you’re right: you’re not acting _all_ squirrely. That was regular you: ‘Gasp! How dare you suggest that I would cheat! Even for the lady I bang!’ Every time I think you’re starting to relax a little, you snap back into goody-two-shoes mode. I don’t get how H.G. puts up with you.” He sat back, crossed his arms, put his fake leer on his face. “Or maybe she’s into that.”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Fine. Leave. I’m the one technically on duty anyway.”

But of course Myka couldn’t leave. She sighed. “Fine. What if Helena and I move out of the B&B?”

Pete gave her the fake bug-eyes, then settled his face back down. “Are you allowed to do that?” he asked.

“I don’t think it’s a prison. Is it?”

“Beats me. I guess you’re gonna find out.”

“It’s a big step.”

“Compared to all the other stuff? H.G. moving out of that coin and back into her body: _that_ was a big step.”

“When you put it that way,” Myka conceded.

“You’re not talking about moving to, like, Cleveland.”

“Just next door. Ish.”

“Although,” he said, with a little opportunistic drag on the word, “if you lived in Cleveland I could go there for Browns home games and stay with you.”

“In that case, we’re moving to Cincinnati.”

“Stab me in the heart, why don’t you.”

“You can walk next door and sit on our porch and watch football on your phone,” she told him.

“So it’s really not that big a step.”

“And you really think it’s okay?”

He shrugged. “If you try to go to Cincinnati, I’ll tesla you. Actually I’ll tesla H.G., and you’ll be so busy yelling at me and making sure she’s okay, you’ll forget all about the U-Haul. I promise I’ll help load all your books in one, anyhow, to truck ’em next-door-ish.”

“Thanks.” She meant it, and she knew he knew she meant it.

“Don’t sweat the small steps, El Squirrelo.”

She took a page of notes that she’d finished transcribing, folded it into a paper airplane, and launched it at his head.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 1 tumblr tags: I think this is an objectively stronger piece than 'Secret', which I decided not to rework based on my original grandiose plans, (which may or may not have included a literal dash through an airport), anyway everybody gets their turn here except Artie, and I regret the lack of Abigail as a downside of the rewind, anyway there isn't really a natural break in the story, so I figured it would be okay to end this part on Myka and Pete, being the good people they actually are, as opposed to the strange possessed beings of that nonexistent dumpster-fire season


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the extra-talky conclusion of this little tale of a first Bering-and-Wells Christmas, which began with some conversational business about a competition having to do with trees, plus an expressed interest in real estate; however, nobody’s moving to Cincinnati. Probably. I hope you enjoy the additional time with these precious, precious dorks, whom I’ve tried to treat reasonably well for the holiday.

Helena sat on the top of the ladder, contemplating the bedsheet curtain. Steve had refused to leave until she was finished hanging it, and then he had wanted to take the ladder away with him… but Helena liked the vantage. She said out loud to him that she would not take any undue risk, and she did not hedge the statement; he frowned but let her have her way.

She looked down to find Leena looking up at her. “Was that enough safety pins?” Leena asked. “I have more.”

“How much safety is enough?”

“I haven’t hit a limit.”

“Nor I,” Helena said, “but the curtain does seem to be maintaining a certain integrity thus far. And note the hooks! When I was affixing them, the adhesive—”

Leena grasped the ladder quickly, as if she had seen it wobble, but Helena had felt nothing. Leena said, “Anyway, I know you aren’t starting your competition till tomorrow, but I wanted to warn you that Claudia seems to think she has a prior claim on every Christmas decoration that lives here at the B&B. Do you want me to try to divide it all equally between the two of you?”

“Please don’t trouble yourself. Give her what she wants.”

“That seems _way_ too easy. On everybody.”

“Some things are simple,” Helena observed.

“What are you up to?” Leena seemed to say this not with suspicion, but with genuine curiosity.

Helena considered what to tell her. Not the truth, not yet… she decided on, “Trying to make the season reasonably bright.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve wanted to sing any carols about my Pete shifts, but so far it’s been an effective strategy. So I’ll reserve judgment on this… tree extravaganza. You aren’t planning to let Claudia win, are you? As a gift to her?”

“Heavens no. What do you take me for?”

“You’re right; she’d be offended. But you’ve got something up your sleeve.” And this she said not as an accusation, but as a quite straightforward assertion.

“Always,” Helena assured her.

“You’re a good counterweight.”

Not what Helena had expected to hear. “Am I?”

“Complementary colors. It’s kind of a cliché, but it’s the best way to explain what I see in you, particularly lately, in relation to each of the others. It’s lovely. Are you _sure_ you want me to let Claudia have the decorations?”

“Entirely. But thank you. For it all.” She was having to clear her throat entirely too often during conversations this holiday season.

“You’re welcome, but also, thank _you_. Handing her the boxes and being done with it? Don’t tell anybody else, but decorating this place is exhausting.”

“I don’t doubt it. Go put your feet up; you’ve earned it, for helping with the Pete campaign, certainly, but clearly also for your own attempts to make the season bright.”

“I’ll do it if you’ll let me put the ladder away first. You’re making me nervous, sitting up there.”

“Are you concerned that I might fall?”

Leena shook her head. “Not me. I’m concerned that you might swoop down on some defenseless rodent.”

****

Helena gave in to Leena’s wishes regarding the ladder, so she was standing on the floor (pouting a bit again) when Claudia came to inspect the curtain-work. She approved, enthusing, “This looks great.” She raised a hand and pulled on it a little. “Solid.”

“The hooks,” Helena began, “will be able to release from the surface due to the polymer that—”

Claudia interrupted, “Never mind releasing it. We should leave it up all the time; maybe get a wind machine going so we can do karaoke like we’re in some vintage cheeseball MTV video.”

“Myka prefers an open floor plan. Which reminds me, do you know anything about real estate?”

“I know that no matter how you slice it, even if you unslice it by taking the curtain down, _this_ house”—she gestured with her hands, as if Helena might not understand what “this” meant—“doesn’t have an open floor plan.”

“ _Purchasing_ real estate,” Helena clarified.

Claudia shook her head. “I’m a millennial. We don’t do that.”

“Then you are of no help to me.”

“Hey!” Claudia said. “I’m of massive help. I took that shift with Pete!”

“In recompense for my bisecting the room. I’ve moved on to real estate now, and in any case, you yourself said that it ‘looks great,’ the bisecting.”

“Yeah, I heard you think that’s romantic for some weird reason?”

“I don’t. Necessarily. Myka does.”

“But you just said she prefers an open floor plan.”

Helena nodded. “She is a complicated woman.”

“Said the pot,” Claudia muttered. “What does real estate have to do with anything?”

But Helena was not ready to share that. “You’re something of a kettle yourself,” she said, as a distraction.

“Aw, that’s sweet. Buttering me up won’t work, though. I’m not gonna go easy on you.”

“I didn’t think you would. But as I’ve told you, victory will be mine regardless.”

“How can you stand there and say that like it’s a sure thing?”

“I can stand here because of a series of exceptionally improbable events that has culminated in my presence in this room at this time. And I can say it like it’s a sure thing because it _is_ a sure thing. My display _will_ feature more tree-hung ornaments than yours will.”

“I swear it’s like you want me to want to kick your ass.”

“Now why would I want you to want to do that?”

“Don’t blink those Bambi eyes in my direction. The innocent act might work on Myka, but it doesn’t work on me.”

“It doesn’t work at all well on Myka either,” Helena said, with regret.

****

“I’m tired of that stupid curtain already,” Myka complained to Steve the following day. “Talk about time travel… if I could go back in time and make sure Helena never talked Claudia into this competition, I’d step on that butterfly in a heartbeat. Why is she _like this_?” They were in the kitchen, and Myka was making a pot of coffee. She slammed the filter basket into place for extra emphasis.

Steve, who was sipping at a cup of tea, warmed his hands around the cup. He gazed into it for a moment, then looked up and said, “Your relationship gives me hope.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” Myka told him. Her relationship, such as it was: what a disaster it had begun as, could still turn into, would probably slow-motion keep on being, even _without_ ridiculous Christmas competitions that involved curtains in rooms that kept you from sitting in your preferred spot for reading _and also_ preoccupied the woman who shared your bed to such an extent that it didn’t feel like you were having any Christmas at all together, let alone what was supposed to be your very sentimental first one.

Steve went on, “And I don’t even mean in the majestic beat-the-odds sense that Claudia can get so moony about.”

“Can she?”

“You don’t want to know the particulars. She gets moony about the everyday too, but just believe me when I tell you that one of these days she’s going to write an epic fantasy novel that’s an AU of the two of you.”

Myka squinted at him. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t want to know the particulars, he said, quoting himself.”

“Okay.”

“I just mean it in a ‘the Warehouse doesn’t turn _everything_ into craziness’ sense.”

“It does though,” Myka said, because she and Helena were certainly one of the thousands and thousands of exhibits in _that_ case.

He smiled. “You asked me to help her hang a curtain for a Christmas decorating competition.”

“How is that not craziness?”

Now he chuckled. “You made me swear I wouldn’t let go of the ladder while she was on it.”

She had done that. She’d felt silly and overprotective, but… “I guess I see your point,” she said.

“So it gives me hope.”

At that moment, Leena walked in. “What is it that gives you hope?” she asked. “The idea that there’s coffee brewing? Because that definitely gives _me_ hope.”

Steve said, “Then you’re in luck. But I was talking about Myka and Helena’s relationship. Something to believe in.”

“Stop it,” Myka said. “Here, look, the coffee’s practically done, and you can have the first—”

“Hope is even more important to this place than safety is,” Leena said.

Myka sighed. “That is… a statement I find hard to argue with.”

“And I should tell you,” Leena went on, “that Steve sent me in to make sure Helena didn’t fall off the ladder after he left.”

Myka turned away from them, under the pretense of pouring the coffee. She coughed and said, “I appreciate you people more than I’m comfortable explaining out loud.”

“What about me?” she heard Claudia say from the doorway. “Do you appreciate me? Enough to give me caffeine at least?”

Myka turned back around and tried to look judgmental. “I’m not sure. This tree business.”

“Hey! It was her idea.”

“First, you agreed to it,” Myka pointed out. “But second, _why_ was it her idea?”

“Why is anything ever her idea? I don’t even remember what we were talking about. Philosophy, maybe? Because of that one stupid class and my incomplete.”

“You _have_ to finish it,” Steve said.

“I don’t _have_ to do anything. You’re not the boss of me.”

“You do have to finish it,” Myka told her.

“You’re not the boss of me either.”

“I thought you wanted that degree,” was Leena’s contribution.

Claudia shrugged. “I’m a millennial. All I really want is for people to start paying attention to climate change. Oh, and no debt. And maybe a good bowl of phở? Or a big ol’ lasagna. I’m not a picky eater.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be avocado toast?” asked Myka.

“Extremely last-Tuesday. But even it did still happen to be about the toast, you of all people know nobody’d ever get a chance to have it in this house.”

“I of all people?”

“You can’t tell me you’ve never seen your… what are we calling you and H.G.? Life partners?”

“More like _debate_ partners,” Myka said, telling herself to act disgruntled, play it off. Better not to reveal the adolescent, painfully ecstatic way her heart had jumped at “life partners,” something that should never have been able to be true but was anyway… maybe Steve and Leena were right about hope. Steve and Leena were generally right about a lot of things.

Claudia clapped her hands. “Oooh, actually, it works better if we say you’re on opposing debate teams and you’re sneaking around and getting together behind your coach’s back, but you make sure to have really shouty arguments with all kinds of over-the-top logicky vocab like ‘disjunctive syllogism’ and ‘modus tollens’ whenever anybody else is around. And sometimes you do the shouty logicky part just for fun. Steve, hasn’t that got potential, AU-wise?”

“No,” Steve said, very quickly. “And even if it did, Myka’s standing right here.”

“Wondering about toast,” Myka said. “And nothing else, so please don’t explain the other thing.”

Putting on a look of aggrieved disappointment, Claudia said, “Fine. Anyway, you can’t tell me you’ve never seen your novel-length AU, probably-college-rather-than-high-school debate nemesis wolf down more avocado toast than… I don’t know. Every hipster in Austin combined? You can’t.”

“I _can_ tell you that,” Myka told her.

“Steve? Is that for real?”

“For real. But I’m surprised too; Helena loves that stuff. When she’s in the mood for it. You know how she is about food.”

“I do know how she is about food,” Myka said, because did she ever. “But avocado toast?”

Leena offered, “Maybe she thinks you wouldn’t approve.”

“Why would I care what kind of toast she likes?”

Leena crossed her arms and shook her head. “She tries so hard not to disappoint you.”

Myka almost said a disingenuous “She does?” But she went instead with a chastened “She does.” Because as she thought about it, she must have at some point made an offhandedly critical comment about the toast, the trend, something. And when she had, Helena would have filed that away—for all Myka knew, Helena might have been _about to_ rhapsodize about the toast but changed course when Myka said whatever disparaging thing she said. Communication was one thing, but the actual scrabble not to get it wrong? That was another matter entirely. It shouldn’t have been possible to tiptoe and bumble at the same time, and yet both of them did that, all the time. “She really does.”

“Which adds to the supply of hope,” Steve said.

“Which is even more important than safety,” Leena added.

“But none of that’s as important as caffeine,” Claudia concluded.

Myka had no choice but to agree with all of them.

****

Earlier in the day, Helena, having exhausted her leverage over Claudia, had entered the Warehouse office to begin a Pete-sitting shift. Steve gave her a significant nod as he departed.

“I’m not as dumb as you think I am,” Pete greeted her.

“I don’t think you’re dumb at all.” It was a slight untruth. But only a slight one, and fortunately, Steve was out of earshot.

“Please. I’ve barely been allowed to go to the bathroom by myself for _days_. I know what’s going on. I let Myka think I didn’t, but I know what you all are doing, and I get a pretty strong vibe that it’s you who’s responsible for everybody doing it.”

“Saving you from yourself,” Helena agreed. Clearly he did know.

“Right. Because you think I’m dumb.”

She rolled her eyes. “Echoing you: please. I’ve been saved from myself more times than I feel comfortable counting, and I assure you, I certainly don’t consider _myself_ dumb. Ergo, why would doing the same for you imply that I’ve made a contrary judgment regarding _your_ intelligence?”

He sat back in his chair and watched as she took a seat of her own. Then he said, “I actually can’t argue with your logic.”

“Very few can.” She paused, considered how much better he needed to be convinced to feel. Most likely, at least somewhat… “I have more proof, if you’d like to hear it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“If I considered you in any way substandard, would I not throw myself bodily into your path to prevent you from being sent into the field with Myka?” This was in no way an untruth.

“I _really_ can’t argue with that. I’d throw myself in my path too.”

“So.”

“She really wants to live with you, you know.”

“Ah… doesn’t she do that now?”

“I know _you’re_ not dumb, so don’t play it. You better be serious.”

“I am.”

“Good. Don’t make it into a big deal, though. She’s worried about it being a big deal.”

Helena gaped at him. “‘Don’t make it into a big deal’? Have you ever attempted to purchase real estate?”

“The _living together_ part.”

“ _We live together now_.”

“Not in Cincinnati. See, now you’re giving me the ‘Pete, I think you’re dumb’ look again.”

“I am giving you the ‘I do not understand what you are talking about’ look, and if you cannot decode that correctly, you might in fact be as unintelligent as you say I think you are. But again, I do not think that! How much more evidence would you like me to bring to bear?” He leaned forward, a “more please” movement, so she said, “Fine. Here’s yet another piece, to make an incontrovertible three: Myka thinks you are far better able to keep me out of trouble than anyone else is.”

“That’s not proof of anything,” he said. “Don’t you figure she thinks we cancel each other out? Because she thinks we’re _both_ dumb.”

“In the end, she’s most likely right.”

“Yeah. Wanna go down to the Warehouse floor and see how many times you have to yell ‘Pete, don’t touch that!’ at me?”

“What does it say about me that I want to say yes?”

“That Myka’s still got a lot of work cut out for her.”

****

Helena had to admit, if only to herself, that she was pleased beyond measure that the judging of the competition was about to at last be underway; she and Claudia had been bedecking their trees for what seemed to be years, and at last the moment of unveiling had arrived. Well, _moments_ of unveiling. Claudia was to be first, and Helena was standing, eyes closed, along with Myka, Leena, Pete, and Steve, in front of Claudia’s space. Helena had no idea what to expect, so when Claudia shouted, “Open ’em up!”, she was as taken aback as the rest of them appeared to be. Literally aback—they each did take a bit of a step away from the display before them.

Pete spoke first. “Here’s what I think happened,” he said. “Santa was flying over the house, and Claud somehow managed to open the roof and shoot down the sleigh, and it all went splat right here.”

Steve said, “This is without doubt over the top.”

It was an astonishing understatement. Helena had never seen any tree so brightly lit, so extravagantly covered. Shine and color and pattern and sheer intensity: barely any tree as such was still visible, yet that was obviously the scaffold upon which this concentrated spirit of Christmas was built.

“I have to say a legitimate ‘wow,’” Leena agreed.

Myka nodded. “I know I’m not on the panel, but in all honesty, I do too. How is it even still standing?”

“It is indeed an engineering marvel,” Helena said, and she meant it.

Claudia glowed with pride. “Thanks, guys,” she said. “Also, thanks, Leena, for having so much awesome stuff in the first place. And hey, good luck topping this baby, H.G.”

“Thank you, but I won’t need it.” She indeed would not need luck… but she did feel a bit of relief, for Claudia had not managed to catch on to her scheme.

“Never mind, then. I’m kicking your ass.”

“Keep that fixed in your mind, darling,” Helena advised, and she pulled down, with an abrupt flourish, the curtain that blocked their view of her tree. “Note how the hooks’ adhesive released,” she told them all, “which is due to the particular structure of the polymer that—”

“Nobody wants to hear about that,” Pete said. “Nobody.”

“Because we’re more interested in looking at the _tree_ ,” Myka added, elbowing him in a way that was not at all subtle.

The appearance of her tree did in fact satisfy Helena: from its limbs she had hung, in total, the cards of three full decks plus two chess sets’ worth of pieces, attached by means of paper clips and thread. She had gathered every birthday candle she could find from the pantry and drawers of the kitchen, fashioning for each a small holder from tin foil; these she placed strategically throughout the branches, to produce an effect of quiet radiance.

Leena said, “First, elegant. Second, automatic disqualification if you burn the house down.”

“We did not have electric strings back in my day,” Helena said, “and yet we managed to light our Christmas trees without putting our houses in peril.”

“That’s a ‘back in my day’ I’ll accept,” Myka said, which Helena acknowledged with a kiss to her cheek.

Steve said, “Following up on what Leena said: third, I like the book on top in place of a star.”

Helena was rather proud of that. Getting the balance right had been difficult, but she’d at last managed to tent the book open over the vertically extended uppermost bough.

“I swear to god,” Claudia said, “if it’s one of hers, I’ll lose it.”

Steve leaned close and read the cover. “It’s _War of the Worlds_. Not very ‘peace on earth,’” he said to Helena.

“It’s the only one we have in paperback,” she told him. “Not being the engineering genius on the other side, I didn’t want the tree to collapse.”

“Under the weight of _your_ genius?” Myka asked, but with a smile.

Helena shook her head. “Charles’s wordiness, rather.”

Leena said, “I’ll point out that this establishment owns plenty of non-Wells paperbacks.”

“This is _my_ tree,” Helena pointed out in return.

Pete said, “But fourth, or whatever number we’re on, okay, so this is your tree. Doesn’t Claudia’s have more stuff so she wins and we’re done? Cookie time!”

Now Helena smiled. “You have not seen the full extent of my display,” she said. Lest anyone begin to suspect her plans, she had added the final elements of her tableau just a short time ago. They were propped up on each side of her tree, hiding under additional sheets, and she now pulled those covers away, revealing two large mirrors, one taken from Myka’s bureau (her and Myka’s bureau; half of it was hers, and she continued to find that surprising, yet also surprisingly unsurprising), the other filched from the wall of the music room. She had had to guess at precisely how to position them, but she’d done well: they offered, in their reflective panes, not only an unending recession of versions of Helena’s own tree, but also similarly endless lines of Claudia’s.

No one said anything. Helena looked to Myka, however, and Myka had obviously understood, in the first instant. She had her mouth open in something like astonished hilarity. Helena winked at her. Myka hid her open mouth behind her hand.

Eventually, Claudia said, “It’s a neat effect, but…”

Explanation was obviously called for. “The requirement for victory,” said Helena, “was to produce the most extensive set of decorations, was it not?”

Claudia nodded.

“Then I would point out to you that the cardinality of _my_ set of ornaments on Christmas trees, here in _my_ display, is aleph-naught. That is, it is infinite. Countably so, but infinite.”

“The reflected ones don’t exist,” Claudia said, clearly puzzled.

“Of course they exist. They’re hanging on my tree, and they’re right over there on your tree as well.”

“The _reflections_ don’t exist.”

Helena then sprung her trap. “Can you construct an argument to that effect? Thesis statement, supporting evidence, conclusion?”

“I…” Claudia began. She shook her head. “Really really hate you,” she finished.

Helena said, with great cheer, “Be that as it may, but will it prevent you from making your argument sufficiently sound?”

“Ugh,” Claudia said.

“You might begin by considering the difference, if there is one, between existence and appearance.”

“Double ugh.”

“How sincere is your desire to best me?”

“Triple ugh,” said Claudia, “but with a solid twist of ‘pretty freaking sincere.’ This entire time, winding me up for this? You _know_ how bad I want to beat you! You are the absolute worst.”

Steve said, “Also kind of the best.”

“Those can be difficult to tease apart,” Myka said, with a glance and a wink of her own at Helena.

“Whatever,” Claudia declared.

“I expect correctly formatted citations as well,” Helena told her.

Leena said, “I expect everyone to stand in front of this whole scene so we can take a festive picture.”

“Artie’s gonna hate that he missed this,” Claudia said as Pete fetched and dealt with the camera. “He’d be rubbing it in that H.G.’s about to lose at something, but also that I have to write a _paper_ to make it happen.”

Steve said, “No; he’d be muttering about you and Helena wasting time when you should’ve been working, and he’d say that you should have written the paper five months ago, and he’d _also_ say that Helena _wants_ to burn the house down. I vote for not telling him about any of it.”

“Seconded,” Helena said, “I don’t want to be accused of conspiracy to commit arson.”

“It isn’t a conspiracy,” Myka was in the middle of telling her, just as Pete dashed from behind the camera to stand beside Leena, yelling “Smile!” Frantic posing ensued, during which Myka continued to speak, and after which Myka concluded, as if nothing had happened, “…set it up all by yourself.”

“I bet the voices in her head would fight you on that,” Pete said. “Can we eat now?”

“We can eat now,” Leena told him, and he dashed again, this time for the kitchen, followed by an only slightly more sedate Claudia, Steve, and Leena herself.

Myka stayed behind, so Helena lingered as well. “What are you—” she began, but Myka had taken the camera into her hands and was looking at the photograph. Helena looked with her. Pete had somehow managed to capture, as Leena had requested, the whole scene, but it was one of festive chaos: infinite trees, of course, but they made the picture far too bright, as if the awkwardly postured and foolishly expressioned human participants were being subjected to a holiday interrogation of some sort.

Helena had never liked to see herself in photographs; she looked either overposed or underprepared, trapped, not quite familiar in the image as someone she would call “myself.” A close cousin, at best, and she felt that might be true of most people, seeing their near-selves as uncanny filmic captives.

This time, however, in this preposterous photo, some magic filter seemed to have produced a true aspect of each person. Claudia wore a smile that managed to encompass both sulk and gloat, befitting both her victory-in-waiting and her status as caretaker-in-waiting. Steve had a calm, casual arm about Claudia’s shoulders, and he smiled slightly, as if he knew he could not help but be the only person in the picture who was perfectly calm and composed. Pete was in mid-blink, exactly as he looked when teetering between sleep and wakefulness; in sprinting into the photo, he had collided with Leena, who was herself laughing, fully and beautifully, as she fell against the solidly standing Steve.

Myka, for her part, was in mid-comment, so she was not smiling, nor was much of her face was visible in any case, for her head was turned toward Helena, and the curls of her hair hid all but her earnest profile. Fitting… yet also, Helena saw, her right arm was around Helena’s hips, exhibiting a possessiveness that Helena knew Myka felt but that generally remained private, unpresented to the world at large. Helena could barely understand herself as being lucky enough to witness it, much less to be the object of it. Seeing it here in this photograph— _preserved_ in this photograph—created a mirror-collision of existence and appearance. _Was_ there a difference? She needed Claudia’s good argument.

As for Helena herself—Helena _herself_ —she was not smiling either. She would have called her expression “surprised,” if forced to choose a word to describe it, but she did not remember having felt any sort of surprise when Myka was chastising her about conspiracy, or its lack.

And yet surprise was completely appropriate as a response to seeing herself in this photograph. This photograph, on this day: her luck in all of it, that Myka’s arm was around her; that she could stand among Steve, Leena, Claudia, and even Pete, and belong with them. Belong with an infinity of them, reproduced endlessly as they all were by the mirrors, as if in every possible universe this photograph would be taken, with this cast, presenting these aspects.

“And there you are,” Myka said to Helena, pointing at the screen, as if Helena might not have recognized herself as part of this truth when presented with it. “Right beside me.”

Helena had to clear her throat yet again. This day. “Where else would I be?” she asked.

****

“Pretty impressive, you winner,” Myka whispered into Helena’s ear much later that night. Everyone else had gone to bed, and she and Helena were standing before the Christmas spectacle, taking one last, quiet look. The birthday candles were long out—Helena had argued, but Leena had insisted, and Myka herself was pleased that Leena won that little battle before anything fire-engine-related happened that would need to be explained to Artie—but the mirrors still displayed all the reflected glory, the infinity of Helena- and Claudia-trees.

“ _Temporary_ winner,” Helena countered.

“You sound remarkably okay with that,” Myka said. She leaned to kiss Helena sideways, both because she felt like it and because she thought it was a good idea to provide positive reinforcement. “Is every Christmas with you going to be like this?”

“Like what?”

“You giving everybody what they wanted, even if they didn’t know they wanted it.”

“Is that what I did?”

“Play dumb if you want,” Myka told her. “But it’s not a good look on you, so I’ll point out that Pete made it to Christmas completely unwhammied. Leena didn’t have to do any decorating, and I know that was a relief to her. You’ve incentivized Claudia to finish that philosophy class, and she’s going to get an A.”

“If all that is true, will you at last concede that I _do_ understand multitasking?” Peevish and teasing at the same time.

Myka smiled. “No.”

Helena sighed. “Exhibit aleph-naught. But what about Steve?”

Steve was kind of a puzzle… but Steve was always kind of a puzzle when it came to gifts, in that he wasn’t much for wants. He projected a completed self, something Myka knew none of the rest of them did. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think it might have something to do with his relationship with you, and with _my_ relationship with you. _Plus_ Claudia will finally quit bugging him to ghostwrite that paper for her.”

Skeptical eyebrow. “I suspect he knew he wanted the ghostwriting pressure relieved. I suspect he has asked repeatedly for that, if not from Father Christmas, then certainly from Claudia herself.”

“Anyway I think I’ll just call you Santa from now on. No, _Secret_ Santa.” She punctuated “Secret” with a push of Helena’s shoulder.

Helena pointedly continued to face the tree. “Then, as it happens, _I_ received what I _did not_ want for Christmas. An absurd nickname?”

“I could go with ‘Santa Baby’ instead,” Myka said, and she _almost_ wanted Helena to agree that that would be a good idea.

Helena didn’t oblige. “I suppose you _could_ , but you should not. Certainly not if you want me to continue looking into real estate. By the way, I’ll need you to review various floor plans.”

She was still looking studiously at the trees, so Myka moved to stand in front of her, blocking her view. “I don’t care about floor plans,” she said, and kissed Helena, again because she felt like it, but also because she wanted Helena to understand the bigness and smallness of the step. Never mind the floor plans.

“Stop being romantic,” Helena said, even as her eyes were still closed from the kiss. “Yes you do.”

Myka didn’t give her time to get them open; she bent and did it again, this a longer kiss, an “it’s Christmas Eve and I bet you want to be romantic as much as I do” kiss. She then said, “Also, just for your information, you never disappoint me.”

This time Helena did open her eyes. Her kiss-soft lips stiffened a bit, as did her tone, as she said, “Stop being romantic. Yes I do.”

“I refuse to stop being romantic. It’s Christmas, and I’m getting that picture of all of us blown up and framed, and I’m hanging it on the wall of wherever we end up living.”

“Are you.” But the stiffness was gone.

Myka let go of Helena, crossed her arms over her chest, and nodded. “Non-negotiable. Dealbreaker. It’s the most ridiculous Christmas picture ever taken, and it turns out it’s exactly what I wanted, so there, Santa. Baby.” She grinned.

This time, Helena did the kissing, quick, pinning Myka’s arms between them, holding so tight that Myka had to squirm to get them free, laughing as she struggled. Helena said, “To see you this happy, to know that I’m responsible for it? That means I’ve been given what I wanted as well. But…”

“But?”

“ _But_ I knew I wanted it. I just didn’t know how to _achieve_ it.”

That made Myka cross her arms again. “You could’ve _asked_ me. How happy I am, pretty much every day. Who’s responsible for that.”

“That seems far too straightforward. How could such an approach possibly work?”

She’d said those words lightly, but Myka could hear behind them all the push of all their history: how they had not been straightforward, either of them; how they had asked no questions for abject fear of receiving intolerable answers; how they had believed, for so long and with such sorrow, that no approach at all would ever, ever work. So she asked back, trying for just as light but just as meaningful, “Why are you _like this_? Or I guess I mean, why are _we_ like this?”

“First,” Helena said, with a small “heed me well” handwave, which meant Myka was going to get a _very_ formal answer, “I would direct your attention back to our difficulties with communication. But second—and I believe this applies to everyone and their unknown, or unarticulated, wants you’ve said I satisfied—people rarely say in so many words what they want. Further, they are rarely _able_ to say in so many words what they want, because they cannot formulate their complex wants in words. You and I, of all people, know that to be true.”

Myka shook her head. She could be straightforward now. “Silly philosopher. I want you. Some secondary and tertiary things, sure, but primarily you.”

Helena took her time in responding. Then she began to smile. “Well. That was formulated in words, was it not? I stand corrected.”

“I think that’s really what I wanted all along.”

“I know,” Helena said. Her hands performed a small _ta-da_ flourish, and she dipped her chin, smiling now just enough, and just right, to be sweet yet also smug, with a tiny bit of left eyebrow for spice. Myka would have tackled her then and there and dragged her upstairs, but Helena dropped her hands, dropped the smile, dropped the eyebrow. She knelt, and Myka thought _Oh my god, is she going to_ —but Helena picked up, from the floor, one of her fallen temporary hooks. She held it up and out toward Myka and implored, “Now will you _please_ let me tell you about the adhesive polymer?”

Myka laughed and nodded and resigned herself to being bored to tears for the duration of the rhapsody.

And she thought, _That’s for me_.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 2 tumblr tags (which reference JK and JM's joint appearance at DragonCon): I warned you it was contrived, just fyi my spellchecker keeps wanting to change 'unwhammied' into 'unhemmed', and that struck me as outsize hilarious, anyway to conclude the holiday season, I'll say of the early Christmas present that the nerdsbians received four months ago, that it seems to have been taken by some as a valediction, but to me it was an affirmation, not in an emotional-support sense, but rather as testimony, because I think hope may indeed in the end prove to be more important than safety


End file.
